Legitimacy Is Asked For, Not Demonstrated
The Afghan Taliban’s renewed bid to participate in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization comes at a time when their own house is visibly on fire. The request itself is not extraordinary. Afghanistan is an SCO observer, and regional engagement is, in principle, desirable. What makes the appeal problematic is timing, context, and contradiction.
At the very moment the Taliban seek inclusion in a security-focused regional bloc, Afghanistan is experiencing widening armed confrontations involving Taliban factions, local populations, and criminal-resource networks. These are not isolated disturbances. They reflect a governing system that cannot enforce routine authority internally, while simultaneously failing to meet basic external security obligations.
The gap between what the Taliban demand and what they deliver has become too wide to ignore.
Badakhshan Is Not a Local Dispute, It Is a Governance Failure
Badakhshan has become the clearest illustration of Taliban decay. What began as a routine administrative transfer ordered by the supreme leadership escalated into months of armed defiance. A commander refused to step down. Mediation failed. Armed deployments followed. Local populations sided with the defiant figure, not out of ideological loyalty, but because control of gold mines and economic survival were at stake.
This pattern has repeated itself across Badakhshan in different forms. Resistance to poppy eradication campaigns. Armed protests during funerals. Clashes involving Taliban units themselves over mining control. Even the personal intervention of senior military leadership failed to impose discipline.
These incidents, taken together, show that Taliban authority in resource-rich provinces is transactional, contested, and enforced through violence rather than institutions.
A movement that cannot impose a transfer order without bloodshed cannot credibly claim to run a state.
Nangarhar Signals a Dangerous Horizontal Split
If Badakhshan exposes vertical weakness, Nangarhar reveals horizontal fragmentation.
The armed confrontation in Jalalabad over control of an airstrip was not about ideology or security. It was about power. Kandahari Taliban attempting to assert control over strategic infrastructure met armed resistance from local Taliban units. Control of airstrips means control of logistics, revenue flows, and operational mobility.
When Taliban fight Taliban over infrastructure, it signals the erosion of central command. More critically, it creates vacuums that extremist groups and criminal networks are quick to exploit.
This is how ungoverned space is manufactured inside a regime that claims total control.
Terror Safe Havens Are the Regional Red Line
While internal disorder weakens the Taliban from within, their external conduct has hardened opposition around them.
Pakistan’s National Assembly has now placed on record what has long been asserted through diplomatic and security channels: the leadership of terrorist groups operating in Balochistan is based in Afghanistan. These groups are embedded in a criminal economy involving oil smuggling, misuse of transit trade, and arms trafficking.
At the United Nations, Pakistan has warned that continued cross-border attacks originating from Afghan soil are intolerable. This is not a rhetorical escalation. It reflects accumulated frustration with Taliban inaction against groups such as the banned TTP and BLA.
Russia and Central Asian states echo similar concerns. CSTO discussions increasingly frame Afghanistan as a source of instability, extremist spillover, and trafficking rather than a stabilizing partner.
This convergence of concern across Pakistan, Central Asia, and Russia is not accidental. It is evidence-based.
The Taliban’s Narrative Is Collapsing Under Scrutiny
International assessments now openly contradict Taliban claims of economic recovery and security stabilization. Afghanistan’s economy remains at subsistence level. Governance institutions are hollow. The ban on women’s education continues to damage social cohesion and economic viability.
More than twenty terrorist organizations continue to operate from Afghan territory. This is not a failure of messaging. It is a failure of action.
The Taliban insist Afghan soil is not used against others, yet militant attacks linked to Afghanistan continue. They claim discipline, yet commanders defy orders openly. They speak of sovereignty yet allow non-state actors to dictate regional security dynamics.
This contradiction lies at the heart of Afghanistan’s isolation.
SCO Participation Is Conditional, Not Automatic
The SCO is not a symbolic club. It is a security architecture built on commitments against terrorism, separatism, and extremism. Observer status does not entitle automatic participation, especially when a state or authority is seen as a source of the very threats the organization exists to counter.
Mongolia attends SCO meetings because it poses no security threat to its neighbors. Afghanistan, under Taliban rule, does not meet that threshold.
The issue is not recognition versus non-recognition. It is credibility.
The Exit Ramp Still Exists
Despite everything, the Taliban are not without options.
Regional actors do not seek Afghanistan’s collapse. They seek predictability, restraint, and verifiable action.
The expectations are clear:
Dismantle terrorist safe havens, not rhetorically but operationally
End facilitation and tolerance of groups targeting neighboring states
Prevent cross-border attacks through enforceable border control
Allow verification mechanisms rather than demanding blind trust
Honor commitments already made, especially under the Doha framework
These are not external impositions. They are minimum requirements for coexistence.
A Final Warning Wrapped in an Opportunity
The Taliban’s current trajectory leads toward deeper isolation, internal fragmentation, and escalating regional hostility. Their request for SCO participation, instead of strengthening their case, has highlighted the contradictions they have failed to resolve.
Engagement is still possible. But legitimacy cannot be demanded while instability is exported and promises are recycled.
The choice before the Taliban is no longer abstract.
It is immediate, measurable, and unavoidable.
Either they transition from force-driven control to rule-bound governance, or Afghanistan remains the region’s most unpredictable fault line.
And this time, the region is no longer willing to look away.
